


Quiet People, Loud Minds

by Capucine



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Psychics/Psionics, Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Bigotry & Prejudice, Canon-Typical Violence, Disturbing Themes, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Abuse, Mushy, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Bond, Psychic Violence, Superheroes, on occasion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 16:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5254772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capucine/pseuds/Capucine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where there are no superpowers, but there are psychic abilities, the psychics are targets--as a medical problem needing to be 'fixed' and as a social problem needing to be 'neutralized.' </p>
<p>Psychics, in actuality, are for the most part harmless. Bruce Wayne knows this--his parents were psychics who never harmed anyone, and he is a psychic too. He devotes his life to protecting his kind, but his work pretty quickly expands to protecting all victims of a society that often tramples those who are different or vulnerable.</p>
<p>Along the way, he picks up a number of young psychics who need his help--and a lot of baggage, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quiet People, Loud Minds

**Author's Note:**

> So, did the random AU challenge again, and ended up with 'Psychics.' Got ideas, decided to run with it.
> 
> Also, the science in this is probably pure shit. XD But frankly, the science of the scientists in this world regarding psychic abilities are probably full of bullshit anyway, so yeah. Grain of salt.
> 
> Lastly, description of results of medical experimentation. Kinda disturbing. :)

Dick had once mentioned that he found it startlingly like the X-men comics in some ways—something he'd related to Bruce pretty quickly.

Of course, Bruce had not paid attention to comic books growing up, somewhat stuck in reality—a reality where his parents died of psychic trauma. Where having different abilities was not a flashy costume and colors and shiny robots.

Psychic abilites had arisen in the population—they had been there for a long time, but mostly well-hidden. Until a rise in the thing that fed such abnormal brain structure had presented itself in the modern age—smog.

Yes, smog. Bruce had heard it explained as the body's adaptation to less oxygen—when such a structure was already present, it expanded with a lack of oxygen, trying to gain more by having more surface area—and inadvertently enhancing abilities. 

It had been described as a tumor, though it rarely killed. It had been described as an abnormality, and the fifties were chock full of attempts to remove it without killing the patient—largely unsuccessful, and the cases that were 'successful?' Left behind drooling, vegetable bodies the majority of the time. The, maybe, two cases that were still functional were not really.

Rosa Dawson, a psychic with the ability to sense violence anywhere, even mere violent intent. A bright, smiling teenager who always looked back at Bruce in history books with those doe eyes and a bright kerchief around her neck, hair in a bouncy ponytail.

Afterwards? Dead in the eyes. Slack jaw. She looked like someone had taken the life out of her. She looked like someone had added twenty years to her then shot her in the chest.

She frequently mentioned an emptiness to her doctors, frequently complained of continual 'ringing'--and killed herself sometime in the sixties, using the unusually violent method of a shotgun shoved up to the back of her throat.

The other case? Lesser known, but touted at the time—for it involved a boy with Down syndrome, and they supposedly cured him of that too. Xavier Smith. A smiling boy, his pictures in the history book, the single one that still bothered to mention him (from the eighties), were marked, calling attention to his features to show his apparent 'intellectual retardation.'

He was not smiling in the pictures, they were taken in a medical setting which unnerved him, according to case notes—which were also remarkably cruel at times, speaking of him as if he were a specimen on a table and not a living, breathing person—and if one could have found personal photos, Bruce was sure Xavier would be smiling.

He'd had the psychic ability to pick up on changes in weather, even many miles away—and since most psychic abilities involved people, this was a rare and unusual gift.

After? He simply stared at the sky, uncomprehending as to what, precisely, had changed. His senses were also dulled, and he stopped eating after a while, eventually wasting away in an institution.

This was why Bruce's parents had done their best to hide both their gifts—and also what had bonded them.

Bruce's mother had the psychic ability to take and carry another's pain, as if it were her own. She said wryly, when he was small, that she had made the mistake of trying to help a sister in labor, and nearly died. It was good she had let it go when she did, because she blacked out immediately after. She smiled at him and made his pain go away often when he got hurt, but not always.

Thomas Wayne, on the other hand, had the psychic ability to pick up on what any given item was made out of. He could put his hand to an incredibly mixed, melded substance, and pick out everything, every element.

And they had their son—Bruce. His psychic ability? He could sense guilt, always—and somewhat unwillingly. Guilt was something he understood implicitly, something that was always a familiar taste in his mouth—and it only intensified when his parents were murdered.

His father had been shot, psychic abilities useless in this—the man calling him a psycho, and Bruce did not know at the time that there was such a term.

He was shot five times, and his mother, in her attempt to save him from his pain, took it all—and died. It was too much. It was too much for his father too, when it returned to him.

And she'd died too fast too stop and think to live for her son, but Bruce had sensed her guilt instantly, when she looked at him for that mere second before the pain overtook her. It was a taste like sucking on a pearl necklace that's just been cleaned, something Bruce knew and would never associate with just being held by his mother again.

He'd nearly drowned in guilt, his own and others, in the police station.

First, he'd run. Not from the police station, but from the tabloids, the stare of the media eager to report on the poor Wayne boy—from reminders, from the guilt.

He traveled the world as soon as he could, seeking a way out of the guilt—but there was no way. Guilt was everywhere—everyone felt it. 

And he did too. Even alone, even escaped to the Mongolian Steppes or remote tropical islands did not let him escape guilt.

So, he let it consume him—and direct him. Let the guilt feed into a need to do something, a cause. He trained relentlessly, for years—he could never describe himself as perfected as a fighter, because the more one learned, the more one recognized they would never achieve perfection, but he became good. He became strong.

Because what he recognized that his parents—love them, they were good, good people—simply didn't: You weren't a pacifist if you could not fight. Pacifism was a choice not to practice violence—if you couldn't fight, you weren't making a choice, you were forced to not fight because you would lose and die.

And originally, he'd meant to be a pacifist of sorts, a spokesperson for psychics like himself.

But it grew. His need to do something grew like a weed that appeared to be a flower, that appeared to be an intentional part of the garden. More than talk. More than donate money or even provide other things for psychics.

He needed to protect them. He needed to show that people could not just take someone apart because of something different in their brain.

And he would fight to the last breath to keep what happened to his parents from happening to another psychic—or their child.

It started modestly enough. The Batman outfit was designed to frighten, to make people think twice about doing something to someone. Also, it would allow him to lay just a tad low while he figured things out—who would believe a human bat with a growling voice stopped a hate crime?

But it was Gotham, so eventually they were going to catch on that he was real.

He started with protecting psychics, but it quickly branched out to other victims of society—hookers, children, women in abusive relationships, druggies, even sometimes animals, and so on. 

And he swallowed the guilt, let it turn into a bitter fuel.

It wasn't that he was stronger than the guilt. It was that he had turned its power against it, into his own power. And so, breathing in the metallic, sharp taste was like inhaling pure power—like incense, like a parent's scent.

It would be a while before he found another like him.

But this little boy would change things forever—for better or worse. And his name was Richard Grayson, known more familiarly as Dick.

He was a psychic as well—and his family would pay for it.

**Author's Note:**

> Expect more shippy things along the way! I have good plans for Tim's psychic ability, and I think Dick's--everyone else's is up in the air for now. :)


End file.
